


Rock and a Hard Place

by ookaookaooka



Series: Vision Explores the Universe [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Murder, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Has Issues, Loss of Innocence, Poor Vision
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ookaookaooka/pseuds/ookaookaooka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers are summoned to fend off what appears to be a second Chitauri attack, and for the Vision, it goes horribly wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock and a Hard Place

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few things you should know before starting this fic: 
> 
> 1\. This is not the first part of this series. It's actually kind of in the middle and it sets up one of the major conflicts, but this is the part I finished first and I wanted to post it so I could feel productive.  
> 2\. That being said, some things will have been established in previous parts that won't make sense here, namely quirks about how I write Vision. He does not think of himself by name, he does not speak in quotes (when it's from his perspective).  
> 3\. Also, the thing with the gem: if he lets someone touch it, he gets a one-way window into their mind. It is the Mind Gem, after all. If someone tries to touch it without his consent, it will blast them.  
> 4\. At this point, Vision and Wanda have established a romantic relationship.  
> 5\. Pietro is not dead.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to tell me what you thought in the comments below.

The call came in the middle of the night. A small town in eastern France was under attack by unidentified assailants; the local police were outgunned and overwhelmed. The town was isolated and though they had called for backup from neighboring cities, none was expected to arrive for a at least an hour. 

This, of course, was hardly enough cause to call in the Avengers, but there was a catch. The assailants moved too fast for cameras to capture clearly, but the pattern of their attack matched the invasion of New York from three years ago.

He had been roused from his usual light sleep by the noise from his Avengers alert, which was buzzing on the nightstand. He shook Wanda awake, then made his way to the hangar for debriefing. 

Only Tony had been there. As he warmed up the Quinjet and prepared for takeoff, he explained the situation. 

"I really only meant to call you," he said. "Sabrina there's an added bonus. I forgot you two were a package deal."

Her name is Wanda. Or did you forget that as well?

"Joking. Joking. I should've given you a better sense of humor. Anyway, if it's the Chitauri again, I know how to handle those, but I need backup and you're, like, a whole army by yourself. I think the three of us can handle this quietly. You two are like Bonnie and Clyde."

Did they not get killed together?

"Not the point, Vizh." Tony rolled his eyes. "Anyway, if this is the Chitauri, we need to focus on containing them to this town. I'm gonna be roping them in, you're gonna be taking them out. Comprendo?"

Sí (he had replied). You will keep them within an established boundary, and Wanda and I will eliminate them. 

"Good," Tony had said, and then they spent the rest of the flight to France in a rousing game of I Spy while they checked over their equipment. Tony won. 

When they were five miles outside of the afflicted town, Tony set the Quinjet to hover and led the way out the bay door, flying to the fight in his armor. He had followed him, going slower, carrying Wanda on his back. 

The situation in the town seemed dire. Most of the buildings were on fire or reduced to rubble, civilians were clinging to each other in the shadows. The police's handguns were all but useless against the airborne, alien attackers. 

They certainly did match JARVIS's records of the Chitauri. Perhaps they had upgraded their tech, but their fighting techniques and the underlying structure of their bodies was exactly the same. There were even traces of a disturbance in the air above the town, as if reality had warped and was now healing itself. 

"If there was a portal, it's gone," Tony had said. "Good. Less cleanup for us. No leviathans this time, either. That's a blessing. You take out that big group there, make 'em stop tearing that building apart, and I'll start herding the others towards you."

The fight dragged on until the first rays of the sun were visible over the fields to the east. Though the portal had closed, there were still many hundreds of Chitauri running around the town, destroying everything they touched. 

He found himself in the main square, fighting opposite Wanda, who was defending a group of schoolchildren cowering in the doorway of the wrecked city hall. 

We are Avengers, he had shouted in French, and they gave him a ragged cheer. We have come to help. 

Half an hour later, though, the children were no safer, and the aliens kept coming. 

He flew from one side of the square to the other, back and forth, doing what he knew was necessary for the protection of these people. Killing Chitauri felt different from destroying Ultron's drones. When he phased his hands into and out of them, crushing whatever he could, he met soft, living tissue instead of the rigid resistance of machined parts. Each withdrawal of his hands came with a spray of gore and a painful death. It was starting to make him feel unwell. 

Tony had explained to him that the Chitauri were like ants; they had a hive mind, and the soldiers they were fighting had no minds of their own. Their deaths meant little to the queen. 

Still, he could see the agony on their twisted, insectile faces as he tore them inside out. It was disturbing. 

At first he had tried to get away with only knocking them unconscious, only to be yelled at by Wanda over comlink when the piles of bodies started waking back up. 

"This is not solving the problem!" she had said. "What is more important, the lives of the people, or the lives of these monsters?"

The lives of these _creatures_ are important to them (he had replied). I am simply respecting--

"They are aliens! They invaded! They do not deserve your respect," said Wanda. She caught an alien mid-leap with a halo of red, and with one motion of her hands it was on both sides of the square at once. Green blood spattered to the pavement. "You need to kill them, not coddle them."

He had dropped the issue, but compromised by whispering _sorry_ to every Chitauri he killed, at least until--

"Vision! Would you knock it off?!" Tony shouted in his ear. "Coms are for communication, not apologizing to the enemies."

I am sorry, he had shouted back, which had earned him a Chitauri dropped on top of him, courtesy of Iron Man. 

The fight dragged on. He did not tire, but he could see Wanda and Tony's reactions slowing, their movements becoming sloppier and their attacks containing less power. Wanda in particular looked exhausted, her spells missing more often than they connected. 

A disturbance in the air above the wreckage of the central fountain caught his attention. The Chitauri noticed it too. In the span of twenty seconds, every living alien in the square had disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a foul smell and a few dropped weapons. 

The one he was holding squawked and wriggled, trying to follow its comrades; he disemboweled it and dropped the steaming corpse to the street. 

Wanda joined him, breathing hard. "Where did they all go?"

He sank so he was hovering only a few inches from the ground. I don't--

A flash of gold light from over the fountain interrupted him, harsh enough to make him squint, and then a tall man stepped out of the air. 

"Did you enjoy my welcome party?" said the man. He spoke in conversational tones, but his voice was clearly audible over the clamor of fighting in the distance. "I had quite hoped they would send me the whole superhero fanclub, but I see I must make do with only three. For now."

Who are you?

The man strutted downward as though descending an invisible staircase. 

Next to him, Wanda looked confused. “Who are you talking to? There’s nothing there . . .” She squinted in the direction of the man, uneasy. “Vision, you’re really starting to freak me out.” Red light trickled from beneath her bracers.

"None of that," said the man, and with the next step he was so close he could smell the electricity on his breath. A cold smile was the only warning before he backhanded Wanda across the square. She collided with the remains of a wall and lay still.

Wanda!

"Oh no, did I do that?" said the man. "What a pity."

He snarled (an action that made perfect sense in the moment, but seemed odd when he reviewed it later) and attacked, but the man vanished in another momentary blaze of gold.

Where are you?! (he roared, anger twisting his face.) 

"Everywhere," echoed the man's voice from all around. 

If you have hurt her, I'm going to--

"Kill me?" said the man. Now his voice was coming from the city hall behind him. "Greater beings than yourself have tried and failed. You cannot even find me. You're going to have to try harder than that. In any case, you have something that is mine by right."

A flash of gold light to his left.

He charged forward, hand outstretched, rage gathering in his gem. It was simple. He was going to let this disappearing man know what it felt like to have fingers wrapped around his spine. Maybe that would hold him in place long enough to wring an apology out of him. If that didn't work . . . his gem had been itching to be used all morning. 

He was so focused, he didn't see the boy struggling in the man's arms until it was too late. 

With a sound like frying circuits, his arm phased up through the boy's abdomen, emerging between his shoulder blades like a gruesome shark's fin. The child arched his back and screamed into the man's palm. A hand like iron trapped his fingers before he could withdraw his arm, crushing them together. 

"I thought I could use a little . . . insurance," said the man. His voice was the closest he thought he would ever come to hearing what maggots taste like: cold and greasy and always trying to worm its way into private places. "If you try to escape, or hurt me in any way, this human will perish. Actually, it might die anyway, since you've gone and . . ." He searched delicately for the right words. "Put your arm through it."

He couldn't breathe. Human blood, red and viscous, dripped towards his armpit. His own blood pounded in his ears. 

What do you--

"I almost forgot," said the man. Two fingers like icicles scraped into his ear, extracted the comlink, crushed it. "We wouldn't want your little superhero friends to find out about this, now, would we? Let us keep this between us."

Who are you? What do you want?

"I am Loki," said the man, the hatred in his eyes matching the burning rage he could feel on his forehead, "and you are the thief who stole my mind gem."

You want my gem?

Coherent thoughts were having trouble forming in his brain. _Loki_ \--this was bad. JARVIS’s memory contained many files about him. He was alien, raised as a brother to Thor, though he was not Asgardian. JARVIS had even seen him a few times, during the Battle of New York, through the cameras inside the then-Stark Tower and the cameras in Tony’s suit. He looked different now than he had then: his face gaunt, his hair uncombed, his lips blue-tinged as if he had forgotten to breathe. No sign of gleaming, golden horns or finery now. The only thing that remained unchanged was the madness in his eyes.

According to the records, Thor had reported him dead more than two years ago.

“Your gem, it never was,” said Loki. His grip on his fingers, hidden from view behind the boy, clamped tighter. No human had that kind of strength. “The Titan himself gifted it to me. I was separated from it in the battle, before my idiot brother wrested me back home to mummy and dad, and you, thief, must have picked it up. I simply intend to reclaim it.”

I do not think that will be possible.

The boy looked at him with huge, frightened eyes. It was one of the children from the group he had been protecting in the city hall. He looked, saw pain, shaped his face into an apology, knew it wouldn’t be adequate. Looked away.

“Not possible?” Loki raised his eyebrows. “Sadly, that is not an option for you. Hand it over, or I will take it by force.”

I--I don’t think I can--

“Then, thief, you are truly a fool. Did you not understand me? This mortal will die if you do not. You have one more chance.”

I am not a thief! I am not the one who took it! Please, you must believe me!

“Oh, really?” Loki’s voice flicked like a light switch from dangerous to friendly; he thought the sudden shift might indicate sarcasm but he couldn’t be sure. “If you did not, who did?” Bluish fingers left the child’s mouth and eased towards the gem.

I do not know! Please, I cannot remove--

He shut his eyes as Loki touched the gem, preparing for the onslaught of whatever horrors resided behind those haunted eyes. The burn spiked, becoming pain; he twisted his head to the side and the blast of energy cracked the fountain in two. Loki hissed and sucked his fingers.

“It protects you,” he said. “Interesting. . . . Listen to me, thief. I give you a choice: you may either hand it over willingly, or you may watch this child die. Five--”

I cannot remove it! Please--

“Four.”

Please, listen to me!

“Three.”

It is tied into my nervous system! If it is removed, I will die!

“Two.”

I cannot! Do not kill this boy! Please, I will--

“One.”

No!

Loki’s fingers, now blackened and blistered at the tips, shut like a vise on the boy’s throat. A gurgle, a muffled crack, and the boy went limp, head falling back at an unnatural angle. Loki stepped away and released his grip on his fingers, letting the body slide off his arm with a sucking sound.

Loki _tsk_ ed. “Look at you,” he said. “Pathetic. You would rather kill an innocent child than simply give me the gem. Your loyalty to these people is foolish.” He bent closer to whisper into his ear. “You know it would have been far easier to do the _right thing_.”

His heart was pounding. Loki had done it. He had actually done it. He gagged--an unpleasant experience--and his breath caught, restarted, caught again. Something was wrong with his legs, they would not work right; he felt heavy and slow. The pavement rushed up behind him, hard enough to bruise. He had actually done it.

Cold fingers scraped his forehead like claws, only to be knocked aside by another blast from the gem. He closed his eyes against the pain.

“I will return,” said Loki. “You may not find my next visit to be so pleasant.” He turned, and with a flash of light he could see even through closed eyelids, he vanished again.

It felt like there was a thousand-pound porcupine on his chest as he sat up. Human blood slicked his arm from the tips of his fingers to the point where his deltoid muscle ended halfway down his bicep. It made him feel quite ill. There was more blood than he had known it was possible for a human body to contain, and the body of the boy . . . the body was just in front of him, lying on its side, and he could see the early morning sunlight coming through it.

The boy’s face, frozen forever in an expression of pure terror, held his attention. He felt unable to look away. 

He had never seen a human die before.

And it was his fault. Loki had done the deed, but he was every bit as guilty as the mad god. If he had tried a little harder, if he had convinced Loki that what he said was true, that he could not remove the gem or he would die . . . If he had agreed, and removed the gem himself . . . this child, this innocent life, would not have ended.

His legs were still not working. He pulled himself around and closed the body’s eyes with fingers shaking so badly it took him three tries to get it right.

Something was welling up inside him, something painful and terrible from the center of his being. Logically, he knew it was an emotion, but it felt physical as well as mental even though his memory told him it was only in his mind. It was just the product of neurotransmitters and receptors and biochemistry. Nothing more. It worked its way up from his core, churning his stomach, closing his throat, before it exited via his face. Hot tears overflowed from screwed-tight eyes and dripped down his nose, landing and mixing with the blood on the pavement. They cleaned pea-sized patches where they hit. His breath was coming fast, in big wet gasps; he seemed to have lost control over his lungs as well. His gem ached as badly as his heart.

He was crying. It hurt more than he had expected. He was crying and the boy was dead and it was his fault.

I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.

\----

Wanda came to on the Quinjet with a gasp. “Vision! The Chitauri . . .”

She looked around. The plane was flying, but no one was in the pilot’s seat. That was okay. Autopilot. Through the windshield, all she could see was ocean.

To her left, leaning against the wall, was Stark, still in full armor, with the mask open. The blue glow of his arc reactor lit the dim interior of the cabin. He did not smile, and she did not smile back.

She was lying on the floor near the center of the jet, an emergency blanket tucked around her legs. Not a particularly comfortable bed, but far from the worst she’d ever had. The white noise from the engines and the corresponding vibration in the floor was soothing, in a way. She did a mental scan; her head ached and so did her shoulder, but she didn’t think she had any serious injuries. 

She remembered fighting the aliens and she remembered them running away. She remembered Vision acting strange all of a sudden, but then things got fuzzy. She had a vague sense of flying through the air, but after that everything was blank. Had she hit something? How long had she been out?

“Where is--”

A look from Stark told her to close her mouth. He nodded at the other end of the cabin.

Vision was sitting in one of the fold-out chairs by the bay doors, motionless. By his posture--bent over, face in hand, elbow on knee--she could tell that something was wrong.

“Vision!” she said, and got up, but Stark’s hand landed on her shoulder and stopped her from going to him. She brushed him off and turned to him, angry words forming on her tongue, but Stark shook his head and pushed her into the cockpit.

“There’s something you should see,” said Stark, his voice barely audible over the engines.

“What is wrong with him? He looks--” She glanced over her shoulder. Vision hadn’t moved. She swallowed. “He looks upset. What did you do?”

Stark looked annoyed. His breath smelled like after-coffee mints. “I wasn’t involved. All I did was film. You’re lucky I always leave my suit cams on during a fight.” His fingers fluttered, and an image came up on one of the navigational screens in front of them, hidden from Vision’s line of sight. “As it is, I only caught the last of it, but it’s enough.”

He started the video. The image was shaky, and, she realized, as his gauntlets came into view, in first person from Stark’s perspective. He was above the city, fighting a squadron of Chitauri on hoverbikes. 

“Fighting, fighting, blah blah blah,” said Stark, and scrubbed forward through the footage. “I thought something might be up when I saw the stone go off, here.” He paused the video at a flash of yellow light on the far left side of the screen. “And then I noticed that his vitals were no longer registering, so I flew in to see what was wrong. And I found this.”

He let the video play again. The camera swooped low over the buildings and then pulled up when the square came into view.

Vision was standing next to the fountain, a panicked expression on his face. His arm was raised, and skewered on it was a school-age boy, one of the ones from the group they’d been protecting. She could see his fingers sticking out the boy’s back. For some reason she did not understand, he did not react to Stark’s presence.

The boy was still alive. She could see him struggling, turning his head, trying to kick. She clapped a hand to her mouth.

As they watched, the Vision’s mouth started moving. There was no audio. She couldn’t read lips, not as well as Clint could, but she thought she saw him say the word no just before the boy's whole body jerked. His head fell back, and Vision pulled his arm out in a spray of blood.

She took a breath and found that she was trembling. She swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

In the video, Vision slipped and fell and did not rise. His gem discharged a second blast. The body of the child seeped next to him, staining the ground with a growing circle of red. The camera angle changed again, lowering and rotating, and she caught a glimpse of her own unconscious body, crumpled against a half-destroyed wall. Stark stopped the footage.

“That . . . that is not possible,” she said into the white-noise silence. “Vision wouldn’t . . . he would not _kill_ \--not a child.”

“But he did,” said Stark. “And for all we know, he knocked you out, too. It’s right there in high-definition. I’ve sent the footage back to base ahead of us, the others’ll have seen it by now, we just have to wait for orders from the top.” He chewed his lip, looking restless.

“I will talk to him,” she said.

“Nuh uh,” said Stark. “We don’t know why he did it. Aliens, magic--he’s got a magic rock of infinite power stuck to his forehead. Could be anything. Could be a hack. Could be he just didn’t feel like being Robot Jesus anymore. So you’re gonna stay away and let the adults handle this.”

“No!” She felt irritation at how much like a petty child she sounded. She cleared her throat, tried to sound older. “I will talk to him. We are close, he won’t hurt me.”

She tried to brush past him out of the cockpit but he grabbed her shoulder. 

“Don’t be stupid.”

She fought back the tendrils of red power that slithered their way down her fingers, gritted her teeth. “You can’t tell me what I can do. I will talk to him, with your blessing or without.”

A moment passed, wherein Stark stared her down and she glared right back, nails digging furrows into her palms. Finally, he sighed and let go of her shoulder, waved her past. “I’m not liable.”

Vision had not shifted an inch since she’d last looked at him. She found herself tiptoeing as she drew closer.

“Vision?” She kept her voice gentle.

He did not respond. He did not even breathe.

“Vision?” she repeated, and laid her hand on his shoulder. He did not flinch, and did nothing to acknowledge her presence. “Are you all right?”

No answer. To her alarm, actual tears were trickling out between his fingers, pink-tinged like the rest of him. This was worse than she’d thought, if he was crying.

“I’m going to read you now, okay?” 

She got no response, so she went in.

His mind was shockingly loud, in sharp contrast to the guileless peace she remembered. He was seeing over and over again the last moments of the boy’s life, the way his body looked next to him on the ground, the way the terror would never again leave the boy’s face. He was hearing words whispered into his ear, words that were eating at his conscience. He was feeling the squelchy way the body slipped down his arm, and the way his gem had burned after it went off.

_All my fault, all my fault, all my fault._

He was drowning in pain. There was little she could do to help, but at least she could try to soothe. Be a balm for his wounds.

She cleared a space in his head and filled it with an image of the chapel near her childhood home, a crescent of candles and a stained glass window with an angel. She remembered the hush, the comforting smells of stone and candle smoke, the way voices echoed all the way up to the high ceiling no matter how softly you spoke. It was a quiet place, a place of reverence. A place where horrors that didn’t make sense didn’t matter.

“Wanda.”

A hand, wet with fresh tears, found hers. She opened her eyes.

“You are all right.” He was looking at her, expression full of enormous, teary relief. He clung to her hand like his life depended on it. “He did not hurt you.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You’re not. What happened?”

He looked much older in that moment, more distant, and she felt that some part of the innocent being she knew had been chipped away while she was unconscious. “I . . . I am unsure. A child is dead. I let him die.”

“Oh, Vision,” she sighed. She tried to go for a hug, but he did not reciprocate and flinched away the moment she touched his right side. She clasped his arm instead; it was shaking. “It’s not true, is it? I didn’t want to believe Stark when he showed me. . .”

“It is true,” he said, deep and sad and certain. “I did not deliver the killing stroke, but I am as guilty as the one who did.”

“‘The one who did’?” She looked at him quizzically, concern tying a knot in her stomach. “Who are you talking about? I saw the video. There was no one there but you.”

Vision leaned back as if she had pricked him with a needle. “You could not see him?”

“Who?”

“Loki.”

“Who?”

He sighed, looked down, rearranged the edge of his cape. For an instant, his right hand passed out of the shadows and she winced at the sight of the half-dried blood that caked his skin. “I keep forgetting how isolated Sokovia has been. . . . You know about the Battle of New York? The first time the Chitauri attacked?”

“Of course. Everyone knows about that.” She remembered seeing footage of the battle on TV. She hadn’t believed it, for a while, at least until Strucker’s men showed up.

“Loki led them. He brought the Chitauri here with the intent to exterminate humanity and claim the earth as his own.” Vision’s expression was far away. She touched his thoughts and found him remembering something that was not his. 

“He’s a Chitaur--a Chit--” she stumbled, unsure how to make the word singular. She started again. “He’s an alien?”

“He is not of the Chitauri, nor is he Asgardian, though he appears to be one,” said Vision. “He is Thor’s adopted brother.”

She tried to picture it and failed. Thor was such a teddy bear, albeit one with lightning powers. How could his brother be so different from him? 

“Thor told us of his death when he returned to Earth two years ago,” said Vision. “He watched him die. Now, somehow, he is back.”

“And making you murder children?”

Vision looked away, rubbing his free hand over the curve of his scalp. She couldn’t see how far up his arm the dried blood went; past his elbow for sure. His eyes glistened. “It is more complicated than that.”

“Would it help for you to show me?” She brought two fingers to her forehead, imitating the movement she would use to touch his gem. His perplexed expression was replaced by one of pained indecision. She didn’t need to touch his thoughts to know that while part of him wanted nothing more than to escape into her mind, another part of him was screaming at him to keep it locked away. Protect her. Shield her.

The loud part won. “No,” he said. “You have already seen too much pain in your lifetime. I cannot allow you to witness this, too. . . . I will be all right.” His face said otherwise.

“Are you sure?”

He lowered his chin but did not answer. Did not meet her eyes. His right arm moved restlessly, sending brown flakes drifting to the floor.

“It's not good to leave stuff on your arm like that,” she commented, changing the subject. “I can help, if you like.”

“. . . Yes,” said Vision, as if from a distance. He was staring at the floor, eyes gone glassy. “I would like that. Please. If it’s not too much trouble . . .”

She looked closely at him, laying a concerned hand on his shoulder. He was retreating again. "Are you sure you'll be all right?" She refrained from entering his mind, choosing to respect his wish for privacy.

"I will be fine." He met her eyes with a forced smile.

She lingered at his side for a moment more before traveling the seven steps back across the cabin to Stark.

Stark was still in the pilot’s seat, chewing on something greasy and American. He looked up as she approached. “He’s bad, isn’t he?”

She nodded, then said, “I need a cloth. And some water, or something.”

“Did you find out why he did it?" Stark's eyes were cold. "He wouldn't talk to me. I'd hate to lose him after all this."

She studied his face. Trust was not a word she could apply to him, not by a long shot, but something about Vision’s distress seemed to be upsetting him. He wasn’t angry, she didn’t think, at least not at her; he was just upset and he was expressing it in his own Starkish way. And she felt this was his way of testing her, to see if she could play his game. “No.”

Stark took another bite of whatever it was and chewed thoughtfully. The scent of tabasco and something that might once have been meat escaped on his breath as he spoke. “Rags are in the bulkhead. Third cupboard on the left. There’s some cleaning solution somewhere in the back.”

She unbent her pride enough to say “Thank you,” and turned to retrieve the supplies, but Stark caught her wrist. He was much taller standing up, especially with the extra inch or so the suit provided, and she was suddenly aware of how much older than her this man was. She felt tiny next to him, her hand engulfed by his gauntlet, and a little afraid as well.

Stark looked at her directly, and she tried to meet his power with steel of her own. “Be careful.”

And then he spoiled it by adding, “He’s got a lot of delicate parts.”

She yanked her hand out of his grasp and rubbed her wrist. “And for a moment I thought you were being sincere. I should’ve known better.” She shook her head and went to the cupboard.


End file.
